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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29501658">bright clear line</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/'>Anonymous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Canon, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Curse of the Black Sun, Worldbuilding, literally how is that not a tag, wrote this to rag on stregobor again lbr</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 01:34:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,541</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29501658</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The witcher tells Calanthe that there are some things as true for a commoner as they are for a queen. Some things her golden crown cannot shield her from. Unbeknownst to anyone, least of all Calanthe, those words ring truer than could ever have been expected. </p>
<p>Or: Renfri is not the last of Lilit’s women.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Anonymous</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>bright clear line</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>there were some interesting little throwaway lines or points of emphasis in the first couple episodes around cintra’s royal family that tbqh were probably mostly to establish timeline context and connect the character arcs, but between those and the book canon, i watched them and saw another story hiding in the weeds there......so now i've dragged it out, stuck it in my pocket, and sprinted home to show it to y'all like it's a weird-shaped rock or an especially cool lizard</p>
<p>title from a quote in k.a. applegate’s animorphs series, specifically book #30: <em>"people don't understand the word ruthless ... it's about seeing that bright clear line and not caring about anything but the beautiful fact that you can see the solution. not caring about anything else but the perfection of it."</em></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Calanthe is eleven years old the first time someone tells her she's quite grown for her age. She doesn't particularly <em> care—</em>the bumpkin country lord means it as a joke, a gentle (albeit risky) tease after delightedly learning the princess has already read through most of Temeria’s classical poets of the last century and is more than happy to argue their merit. And it's a true enough observation, jest or no; already she's growing like a weed, head and shoulders above most of the other court children. Calanthe can see it in the mirror, too, like a shadow under her skin, a glimpse of the way the angles of her face will settle as she grows out of a scraggly girl-child into a queen.</p>
<p>So in response Calanthe shrugs, tips her chin in acknowledgement and cuts an amused glance to her lady-in-waiting when the lord and his wife drift away from the head table back to their own seats.</p>
<p>In the seat next to hers, her father scowls.</p>
<p>Calanthe never sees them again.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The thing about being royal, about being a <em>princess,</em> is that it quite often means getting what you want. <em>Whatever</em> you want, within and beyond reason, and getting it first. Usually being one of few, if not the only one, to have it at all. And of course it means, quite certainly, that you sure as shit don’t have to <em>share.</em></p>
<p>Unfortunately, in this one small thing Calanthe is pauper instead of princess: she shares her birthday with fifty-nine other women, and arrives screaming into the world on a day where the sun had hidden its face from everyone in equal measure.</p>
<p>It's delightfully egalitarian, as far as death warrants go.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The thing about being royal, about being the <em>king,</em> is that—surprisingly—you don’t always get what you want. It means that sometimes you have to do what’s best for the people, to sow something that won’t be reaped for years, generations even. It means aiming always for the greater good, and more often than not settling for the lesser evil. </p>
<p>His father was an exercise in selfishness, hollowed out by greed and filled again with cruelty, but Dagorad down to his very name has always been a practice of restraint. Of exceeding expectations; standards set so low they may as well have just tossed them in the grave alongside Corbett himself for all that the people of Cintra expected Dagorad to meet them. </p>
<p>He’s heard the prophecy, the rumours. Of course he has. Not yet a century gone by since Falka’s rebellion, the bloody path she razed through the Northern Realms only just clotted over. The scars won’t heal for generations yet, for commoners and kings alike. (Can he truly blame his father for the monster in his blood, when it had glutted itself on the bones of entire kingdoms long before either of them were even born? Does the explanation make it worthy of an excuse?) Who can justify taking the risk, to write off Eltibald as a madman when they’ve seen what terror a woman’s wrath can wreak?</p>
<p>When Adalia discovers she’s with child, heralds cry it from one end of Cintra to the other, the happy news of the glorious heir. When the court physician and the court astronomer pull Dagorad aside to show him their predictions, they mutter words like <em>prophecy</em> and <em>curse. </em>When night bleeds into day on the morning of Calanthe’s birth and the sky stays dark, the king and queen tell the people that their child has died. </p>
<p>(A little lie, for the greater good.) </p>
<p>It doesn’t matter if the curse is real—if it is, then Cintra has borne the worst of monarchs and stayed standing, and it will do so again. What matters is that there are those who believe it is, and it's <em>their</em> actions Dagorad spends sleepless nights worried over. Not his daughter’s. The duke of Toussaint visited Cintra only a week ago, the cloud of his own daughter’s birth months ago, of what it means, still hanging heavy over his head for all that he insisted it <em>has to be done.</em> Surely Dagorad understood. Surely Dagorad knows what it’s like, committing the lesser evil for the better of everyone involved. </p>
<p>He does know. It’s just that—in that moment of selfishness he suspects had been riding in his blood all this time, speaking to him in his father’s voice but saying his name with his mother’s accent—it’s just that he didn’t <em>care.</em> </p>
<p>Dagorad will never let an ancient madman's rambling cleave more from him, won't let zealots turn his kin into kindling for their fervor. </p>
<p>He is king to all of Cintra but father to only one, and he’d done what he thought was <em>right.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>There is a lesson all mages at Aretuza and Ban Ard are taught, one of if not <em>the</em> first rule of controlling chaos: you cannot create something out of nothing.</p>
<p>In her experience, as someone who’s cultivated her craft without the watchful eye of the Brotherhood at her back and rose to be the Seer-Queen of Cintra anyway, Adalia has found that to be true very nearly all of the time.</p>
<p>However, not <em>always.</em></p>
<p>There is no <em>thing</em> that can be made out of nothing, the headmasters and rectoresses and councilors are right, but an <em>idea—</em>ideas can <em>only</em> come of nothing. They crave that empty space where something could exist but doesn't yet, where they can put down roots and flourish. It's the most mundane magic any race can do: to think a thought, and then to <em>believe </em>it.</p>
<p>That's not to say there isn't a cost for its creation. A rock made to float can be dropped; a flower that shrivels can bloom again. An idea cannot be unmade, cannot be taken back or unspoken or unpondered, and that is its risk <em>and</em> its reward. It only takes one person to breathe an idea into being, a handful more for it to spread, running rampant like an army tearing through city streets.</p>
<p>And in fact, that's exactly what Adalia is counting on.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>On an otherwise unimportant night, nearly midway between Lammas and Velen when the moon hangs fat and bright in the sky, the skill of Cintra’s mages and witches and craft-folk is called upon in the service of their king. A handful, carefully vetted and discreetly summoned, arrive in the capital the night before a lunar eclipse. An auspicious tiding, if unenlightening: an eclipse is the power of an entire cycle of the moon in one night, and the summoned few can’t help but wonder what sort of spell needs doing that Cintra’s Seer-Queen can’t or won’t do on her own. Or perhaps it’s something <em>for </em>the queen; two years on from the death of their baby, the entire country waits with bated breath for an heir.</p>
<p>A steward introduces them to the open court, the noble lords and ladies, before ushering them into a private audience with the king and queen and—and a girl-child, wide-eyed and solemn, no older than two. A child who’s scooped up and settled carefully against the king’s hip when she tilts headlong towards him in a cry of guileless delight. </p>
<p>(For all that it’s a mundane magic, if an idea isn’t sufficiently <em>grand,</em> not brazenly loud enough to reach everyone under its auspices all at once, it runs the risk of <em>changing.</em> Of mutating beyond the careful parameters required of it, and they’ve all seen the products of <em>mutation,</em> watched them ride through the towns with swords across their backs and those terrible eyes. There’s little the Seer-Queen cannot manage on her own, but it’s a virtue to take precautions. It takes a village, after all, to raise a child.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>On an otherwise unimportant night, with an extraordinary moon hanging fat and bright and powerful in the sky, all of Cintra falls into bed to dream one single dream. </p>
<p>And come morning, nobles and nursemaids alike smile and bow and dote on the Princess Calanthe. What a beautiful daughter, what a gift and treasure after the sorry death of Their Majesties’ baby two years past. Perhaps for the best, that; now the king and queen can rest easy, with no madman’s nonsense looming over their child’s birth like a spot on the face of the sun. Calanthe is such a <em> clever </em> child, quick and smart, and she hasn’t shown signs of her mother’s magic yet but there’s something in her <em>eyes. </em>She’s so very grown for her age, some people catch themselves thinking on occasion. But only ever for a moment, and then they never think of it again. </p>
<p>If any of the mages realize the true scope of their work that night they hold their peace, saying nothing between meeting the child and the moment Adalia steps into the circle painstakingly drawn with salt to speak into being a simple thought, one that becomes an obvious truth even before she finishes saying it. Dagorad catches himself wondering why his wife needed all this pomp and circumstance just to tell them all something they already knew—beautiful Calanthe, born to them this year, a healthy child so blessed, so ordinary and safe—</p>
<p>He meets Adalia’s eyes over the whip and swirl of salt in the air, the smug curve of her smile at odds with the way her shoulders loosen with <em>relief—</em>and then it’s over, blustering magic sucked from the room and a calm stillness settling in to replace it, pelting them all with bits of salt as the pressure drops and the windows groan in their settings. </p>
<p>And that, really, is that. Dagorad has lived in dread of the prophecy for so long that he’d nearly forgotten that all of it, at its core, was just this. Just words. </p>
<p>Still framed between the lead cames of the window, the moon grows stronger, brighter. Light floods the room, all the better to see where they stand and what they’ve done here. Dagorad wonders who else would be able to see it, who could look at him or Adalia or Calanthe and <em>know</em>, could read in the angles of her face the way chaos has been bridled to buoy her. </p>
<p>So as the moon ducks behind the cover of clouds to throw the room and its occupants back into the safety of darkness, Dagorad thanks his guests for their service. He has their throats slit later that night, and summarily bans mages from Cintra the morning after.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Decades later, a druid tells a princess a story about girls locked in towers for their strangeness.</p>
<p>If Mousesack has ever looked askance at Calanthe, ever put paid to Dagorad's greatest fear and looked and saw <em>something—</em>well, he's certainly never <em>said.</em> Besides, what is there to say? Daughter of one of the most powerful sorceresses on the Continent, with a daughter of her own who'd nearly brought the castle down around their ears on a whim, and now a granddaughter who's the Child Surprise of a witcher?</p>
<p>It's a fucking weird family. The apples clearly don't fall far from the tree.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Across the Continent, a wizard meets a witcher and insists <em>Renfri of Creyden is the last of Lilit's women.</em></p>
<p>Two months before that, Princess Calanthe defeats Nazair at Hochebuz with a preternatural grace that inspires song. Dozens of them, in fact, sung in all the great halls of Cintra one after the other—countless pots of ink to describe the rivers of blood she carved through the valley, the senseless and tragic deaths of three thousand of her men whittled down to a clever rhyme. </p>
<p>(Like the witcher says, all the good ones have to rhyme.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Calanthe has always thought, a private joke she kept to herself all these years, that Eist would be more than welcome at Oxenfurt if he ever had the notion to go north. He’s a lecturer at heart, can and will talk the ear off anyone about anything if he can corner them for long enough. Calanthe has shared the same glaze-eyed look with Crach and Ciri more than once when Eist gets into one of his moods, and the real highlight of the banquet for Ciri’s birthday every year are the ludicrous debates he and that Redanian bard get into between his sets. </p>
<p><em>Pretty ballads hide bastard truths,</em> Eist had told their granddaughter what feels like a lifetime ago, and he’d been right. Calanthe’s heard plenty of ballads about noble deaths and honourable sacrifices and those aside, she knows her <em>duty.</em> That there may come a time where she is worth more to her kingdom, is more powerful on behalf of her people, as a dead queen than a living one. However, with that said— </p>
<p>Although Calanthe hit the ground hours ago, she isn’t entirely sure she’s gone ahead and actually <em>died.</em> Instead she hovers somewhere in between; awake and aware but not in control, which is by far the more terrifying prospect than death itself. When she hears footsteps behind her, crunching in the thin layer of snow that settles over the city and glitters as it burns, Calanthe cannot turn her head to watch them approach. She can only wait and—for the first time in a long while, since a day where the sun set on a harbor still missing its most precious ship—she can pray. </p>
<p>The steps are slow, steady. Hesitant? Or perhaps unhurried? The pace of someone who doesn’t need to rush, who has everything they could want already in reach. Calanthe suspects it’s the knight with the plumed helmet, the one who took Eist from her. Or worse yet, that fucking <em>mage—<br/></em></p>
<p>“Hello, dear one,” says a woman who is neither as she steps around to where Calanthe can see her, whose voice sounds foreign and familiar all at once, a childhood lullaby half-forgotten, “I’ve found you.” </p>
<p>Her mother’s gift had skipped her, hopscotching to her daughter and granddaughter instead, but even Calanthe can tell this stranger—small and slight, linen shift and unbound hair and a gentle smile sketching her lips while all around her Cintra burns—is something <em>more.</em> Though uninjured, her bare feet leave perfect bloody footprints in the snow as she crouches to trace her fingers along the curve of Calanthe’s cheek, a gentle gesture she can’t feel. Even the cold is fading now into a soft sort of emptiness, hollow like a place where something once took root and, oh—</p>
<p>Calanthe had thought it would be far more dramatic than this. </p>
<p>She doesn’t remember why she thought it was so important that it should be, anymore. Her noble death and honourable sacrifice; in the end, it’s really all just words. </p>
<p>Calanthe stares up at this stranger instead, at her warm, dark eyes—brown, probably, though in this twilight they’re eclipsed by a flash of red when the woman tilts her head and blinks. Stares at the high curve of the woman's cheekbones, familiar angles under the shadow of skin glimpsed in a mirror once before, long decades ago. </p>
<p>At the gleam across her brow where a slim circlet winks in the light, crowning her in the gold of Cintra in flames.</p>
<p>A beacon, to bring the last of her women home.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>so the netflix timeline put renfri and calanthe's birthdays extremely close together, then in episode one stregobor was so fucking insistent that renfri was the last of lilit's women and in episode three tissaia mentions dagorad just banning mages from cintra without reason—y'know, the dude with the fucked-up dad and who grew up being judged first on the circumstances of his birth and not his actual merits, the dude with the super powerful magical wife—and i was just meant to not find some harebrained fic idea in all that?? </p>
<p>also calanthe's family tree is a fucking wreath, so i’d be surprised if there wasn’t some wacky shit going on</p>
<p>anyway, i don't really know what this is or where it came from but it was kind of fun to write, cannae wait to toss it in my "done" folder and never ever think about it again</p></blockquote></div></div>
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